


To Rocky Pytho

by Megkips



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Gen, Historical Ancedotes, Violence Against Oracles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megkips/pseuds/Megkips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waver has summoned a tyrant.  Sometimes, he forgets what that entails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Rocky Pytho

Waver Velvet does not dream of the ocean. 

Waver dreams of a long, winding road, made of dirt, that goes up and up and up the mountainside. The steady march of soldiers forms a bassline, and the lack of any other percussion is jarring. There are no horses here, and a part of Waver knows that where the soldiers are marching to, horses are not allowed. He accepts the information without questioning its source and follows the path up the mountainside, past small buildings whose purpose he can’t determine, until he reaches a temple. 

Waver knows that the great marble building before him is a temple not because of dream logic, but because there is someone storming through the temple’s main doors, yelling that all priests who serve Apollo at this sacred site must abandon what they are doing and attend to him. The voice is an all too familiar rumble.

“Why are you lingering?” Alexander asks, turning to look at the door he’s just walked through. Waver opens his mouth to respond, but stops when Alexander adds, “Hephaestion?” 

The figure to Waver’s left, lingering in the door jamb offers Alexander’s back an unhappy glare. He’s young - god, he barely has a beard, his hair is a mess of brown curls and there’s a jawline starting to show - but his voice ages him well beyond his years. 

“You are going to piss off Apollo like this,” Hephaestion snaps, refusing to take another step in. “And he’d be right to punish you for it, son of Zeus or not.”

“I hardly see the problem!” is Alexander’s response, and he turns to give Hephaestion his biggest smile. Waver gawks, because as strange as it is to see a young Hephaestion, a young _Rider_ is far more disconcerting. There’s no beard on Rider’s face, he’s - well, he’s not short, but he isn’t the six foot whatever Waver’s become accustomed to - and his frame isn’t as muscley as Waver knows it will become. Fuck if the look in his eyes hasn’t changed though. Or the big cheerful grin.

“ _Alexander,_ ” Hephaestion says lowly. “I mean it, don’t--”

Alexander shrugs. “It’s a trifle of a thing. Apollo won’t mind.”

“I don’t want to repeat myself again,” is the response, frustration creeping into the tone. “Listen to me on th-- _Alex!_ ”

Waver can’t make heads or tails concerning the nature of their argument, only that Rider has decided to end it by turning his back to Hephaestion and striding down the temples corridor, again yelling for the temple priests to come out and speak with him. There’s a sigh from Hephaestion that Waver knows all too well, and the silence that follows sets Waver on edge. The entire sequence feels too real, like Hephaestion will turn to his left and see Waver standing there, only to gape at a little English boy from some two thousand years in the future.

Waver goes unnoticed.

From down the corridor, a sudden burst of noise erupts, developing into the cries of three distinct groups. One voice is screamingly obvious, the second is a group of several voices muddled together as one in an attempt to placate the owner of the first, and the third voice - the loudest of all of them - is demanding that everyone stop and that she be put down. 

The group of voices draw nearer, and as they do, Hephaestion’s face darkens. Waver knows that when Hephaestion looks away from the oncoming group, he should as well. Waver’s eyes don’t move quick enough, and he regrets it.

What is approaching is wrong. Waver knows it has to be wrong, because Rider is dragging a woman along a marble floor by her hair and her hair alone, demanding to know why she has refused him an audience. She responds by struggling every inch of the way, fingers clawing at his far too strong arm. At least half a dozen priests are trying to pry the two apart, and Hephaestion is standing there, looking away. 

Waver envies Hephaestion.

The noise becomes unbearable by the time the group reaches the door. Waver covers his mouth, as if someone will hear him gasping, and for a moment, he thinks someone does. The woman - no. No that’s wrong, she’s not a woman, she’s the Pythia. The Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle of Delphi is staring at him, in the flat sort of way that asks why anyone would put up with this man dragging her through her own temple and then shuts her eyes as Alexander takes her out into the sunlight. The priests stop at the door, and now the only noise comes from the oracle herself.

“Let go!” the Pythia screeches, trying her best to be a dead weight, even as Alexander begins to drag her down the temple steps. “You’re unbeatable!”

Alexander freezes in place, and looks down. “Repeat that.”

It’s enough of a pause that his hand lets go of the Pythia’s hair, and she flops onto the steps gracelessly. She stands up with far more poise, as if she had meant to land like that. Waver remains silent, as do Alexander and Hephaestion and the small group of soldiers waiting outside the temple. 

“You’re unbeatable,” she says, adjusting her peplos and smoothing down her hair. The calm in her voice is unnerving. Otherworldly. “I will not repeat myself a third time.”

Alexander turns back to look at Hephaestion, as if the rest of his army isn’t there, and grins. “There. Now I have my answer.”

Hephaestion’s response is muted in Waver’s dream. Whatever he says, Alexander laughs, and walks back up the steps just so he can reach over and ruffle his friend’s hair. An exhausted shove responds, and the scene fades - first into mist, and then into darkness.

Waver wakes.

Rider is perched on the floor, pouring over his stolen copy of the Iliad. He pays no attention to his waking master, or indeed, anything but the words written on the page before him. Waver wonders if Rider knows what Waver has just seen, and if he’s sitting and reading like that on purpose.

He decides no, definitely not. That would mean shying away from the truth of what happened, and that’s far more an alien thing to Rider than looking like a scholar for five minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Homeric hymn to Pythian Apollo (trans. Thelma Sargent): “Lord, to you belong Lycia and lovely Meonia, And yours is Meltos, enchanting town by the side of the sea, But over wave-washed Delos most of all do you reign. And he goes on his way, the son of glorious Leto, To Rocky Pytho, playing on the strings of the hollow lyre...”
> 
> The episode here is [an anecdote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oracular_statements_from_Delphi#359_BC), and we have little way of knowing how true it really is. What’s more important is that in zero, Rider calls himself a tyrant, but we rarely see him act in that way. It’s important to acknowledge that historically, Alexander did some very questionable things, and to agree to follow him should include an acknowledgement of the unsavoury parts.
> 
> As always, with thanks to [Penitence Road](http://archiveofourown.org/users/penitence_road) for the beta.


End file.
